A Busy Time

It's been a busy time for the Wintles!

We've had numerous busy weekends, in Devon with my in-laws, on a Tour of the North (Leeds, Durham, and then back home via Cambridge and London), and we'll be in London this coming weekend too. So we've not been at home much. Weekday evenings have been busy as well.

Here's what's been going on:

Getting rid of the rats

We finally think we've tackled the rat problem. A while ago the man from the council came out again with his boss - the head of Pest Control - for a second opinion. He worked out that the rats were probably getting in from the old "Stink Pipe". The vent connected to the sewer. This isn't used as a vent any more, as a new pipe had been put on the side of the house, but the it hasn't been blocked up. This gives the rats a free run from the sewer up the wall cavity to our loft.

So, we hacked a hole in the side of the old back wall (which has been knocked through into the extension) and shoved a load of chicken wire into the cavity. I'm sure that we have heard the odd scratching since, but there's very little sign of rat activity anywhere and this has been the case for a while now.

Problem is that rats have now started to take refuge in our compost bin.

AARRGRGHHH!!!!

In the mean time the last one to die has stopped smelling and we now have a plague of flies again. Hopefully out last!

Ikea

We've also been having furniture fun. Try to follow this.

We're borrowing some furniture from my sister, who is waiting to sell a house so that she can buy a house. When she moves in to the new, bigger house we can give her "loaned" furniture back. At that point we'll need basically a whole bedroom suite, including a bed and wardrobes. We'd also promised a sofa to a friend of ours in Bristol. So whenever we were going to go to Ikea (in Bristol) to buy the bedroom furniture, we were going to hire a van and take the sofa on the same trip.

However, we found the ideal piece of furniture to replace the sofa in a sale. So we bought that and had to expedite the sofa-taking trip. As we had the van we figured we may as well pop to Ikea as well.

Now, our last experience of Ikea was not good. I mean NOT good. It was horrible and we got only about half of what we went for. So we were psyching ourselves up for this trip.

It turned out not so bad and we got about a 90% hit rate. Unfortunately this meant that the two main bits of furniture (bed and wardrobe) were incomplete. We had a head- and foot-board for the bed but no sides, and the wardrobe lacks some drawer fronts.

So on our trip round the country we stopped off at Ikea Leeds to pick up some bed sides (which were crammed into the car next to a gracious Sally for several hundred miles), but the drawer fronts aren't due in the country at all for about 6 weeks.

What we have learned along the way is that Ikea's phone service is pretty good. You can do automated stock checks and, if something's out of stock, you can get the store to text you when it comes back in stock! Rather clever really.

General Easter Update

It's been a while and we're off on holiday tomorrow so here's a few thoughts to jot down before I go.

Easter and "The Passion"

It's Easter Sunday. Easter is obviously a hijacked pagan festival - witness the eggs and bunnies that symbolise new life as spring approaches - heck the date of easter even changes with the lunar cycle! But, regardless of that, this is the time when Christians celebrate that Jesus rose from the dead and brought us a new and different sort of life. God has forgiven us of the wrong we've done and we can follow Jesus in faith knowing that he died and was brought back from the dead to live forever. I join with the many today who shout "Hallelujah" - Praise the Lord!

It's been a good time of reflecting on what Jesus did and why it means so much to us. It
saddens me that people have so little understanding of the man at the centre of the Christian faith. I'm not the sort to ram it down people throats, but if they ask I'll happily explain, and highly recommend, my faith, that I have come to see as the truth. But the
occasions to explain to people are sadly limited, even at this time of the year.

Encouragingly, this year, the BBC has done a screening of a 4-part film of "The Passion" - the events of the last few days of Jesus' life. This has been very interesting to watch. Many have tried to interpret the events in their own ways down the years. I like the BBC's attempt. It feels quite real and give you a good sense of what Jerusalem was like at the time, and some insight into why certain people may have done what they did on that first Easter. What it lacked for me was a spiritual element - little prayer, no angels, no miracles, no fear of God. I thought the pharisees more interested in what was going on that then disciples. It felt earthly, lacking a heavenly God. A tale told, but somehow lacking the essence of what was really going on. A political revolution was definitely going on, but the "kingdom of God" seemed relegated to little more than a nice-to-have desire of the heart. I think it lacked...well...passion!

But good on the Beeb for showing such a thing. And don't get me wrong - it was a REALLY good re-enactment of what happened - captivating and compelling. It was just very non-committal too.

Oh, and there seems to have been a lot of chocolate around. Not sure what that's about.

Small Group Leading

I attend a thing called a "Small Group". This is a group of about 10 people from church who meet during the week to chat, pray, study the bible and share news together. Small groups are an important part of church life as they enable people to connect and meet in God's presence in a deeper way than you can in a larger group on the Sunday.

This week I led the group in a study. It was the first time I'd done this for a long time and it seemed to go down well, but I'm not entirely sure. It's always hard to judge how these things look from the other side. I really enjoy preparing and leading groups like this and I hope I'll get to do it again.

Garden

With 3 days off before our trip away, we were meant to be gardening. Both digging and planting. But the weather's been AWFUL. Snow, sleet, hail, rain, gales, freezing temperatures. So that'll have to wait. Longer days are coming so I suspect some evening digging may be required. We've not planted a thing yet and only have a small patch of weedless garden.

House

So instead we've been concentrating on the house. Sally's a star with painting and has made great progress on the dining room. We've committed quite a lot of the last couple of days to tidying up the edges and we're VERY nearly done. Here's the before and after:

As well as painting we've also put up another nice light. I confess, I thought this was a bit over the top for the small room, but Sally loves it and it is a beautiful thing and we got it for half price.

Wiring the new light in was interesting (as are most thing involving the electrics in our house). We have "loop in" wiring, so three cables come in from the ceiling; power in, power out, and the loop to the switch. This makes for a complicated bit of wiring to get the light connected up. However, in this fitting, the live and neutrals seemed to be wired backwards. All the black cables were where the reds should be, and vice versa. A quick chat with my dad and a few diagrams later and it appeared to be safe. After all, the previous fitting worked!

It seems that normally you have the three live wires tied together with power coming back from the switch to the light on the "spare" neutral cable. In our case, we had the three neutrals tied together with the spare live coming back from the switch. From a "logical" circuit point of view this means that the switch is on the neutral side of the light, rather than the live. There was no reason why it shouldn't work. And, indeed, it does!

I'm sure I should be more scared of electricals than I am. I'll get a nasty shock one day.

Rats!

Darn it. The rats are back. We've heard vague scratchings recently and dismissed it, but they were definitely up there last night. I can only see one little hole outside that they might be getting in. We've put fresh poison down and some proper rat traps in the loft. Grrr....

Cycling

Not much going on on the cycling front. I've been doing longer trips into work and back and generally enjoying being out on the Felt. Both bikes need a good clean which I was hoping to do this weekend and haven't got around too. Oh, and I had to replace another spoke on the Raleigh. Not sure how this one broke but fixing it was easy having done it before.

Had other transport problems too when the car started spluttering a bit on the way back from the outdoors show. Kwik Fit fixed it with a new clamp on the exhaust - the existing one had come loose. They charged me £2. Bargain!

Other Developments

There are some other interesting developments going on that I can't really talk about too. These are very much connected to our spiritual and church life and involve some interesting changes that are going on around us. Some of this is stuff that we thing God has been telling us might happen in some way over the last year so it's very exciting seeing how that might come to fruition. Please, if anyone's reading, don't ask us any questions because we can't answer them. I probably shouldn't even be putting the teaser out.

More will be apparent in the coming months, I hope!

Holiday

And so to probably our most anticipated holiday so far. We're only going to York and the Lake District, but we've both had such a hard few weeks at work that we REALLY need it. We're looking forward to our first bit of fell walking on our own (how will we get on without a more experienced guide?), and we'll hopefully have a rest in there too.

I will probably be quiet for a few days, both Blog and Twitter-wise. Back with some photos on Saturday!

Digging it.

Mud

Glorious mud.

That's what's at the end of our fairly large garden!

Oh, and weeds. Creeping buttercup apparently. The queen of weeds in the Wintle garden.

Our Garden

One big reason for buying the house that we bought was the c. 100ft garden. For a nearly-town house this is HUGE! And it's nicely split with some lawn, some patio and a vegetable patch.

There are numerous reasons why we think a veg patch is great:

1. It's OH SO ENGLISH!
2. We believe in buying locally
3. We're trying to be sustainable (might not achieve that this year but hope to in future years!)
4. We hate supermarket food packaging
   
5. Gardening is fun, and a good team-building opportunity
6. It will help us keep fit
7. Food will taste better
8. Eating vegetables will be SO much more satisfying knowing that we've grown them ourselves.
   

Oh and we've already decided that there's no point resisting the fact that we're turning into our parents so there's not real excuse NOT to get into gardening.

Preparing the Soil

Now, we bought the house in October and it took us a while to move and unpack and settle, so we've only really just seriously started thinking about the garden and from what we gather, all the weed killing processes (mulching, rotavating, poisoning and so on) start in the autumn and progress over the winter.

Failed Cardboard Mulching and so on...

We DID originally try laying lots of cardboard over the patch. This would remove the light and air and kill the plants and they would then rot into the ground! But this has only been a little bit successful. We didn't really have enough cardboard and it kept blowing away - you need LOTS of BIG boxes and heavy things to hold them down - fabric pegs are not strong enough. This probably works if you have lots of old carpet or something but just cardboard boxes really didn't do it.

The idea with rotavating is very similar - you chop everything up and over the winter it rots into the ground. We didn't do this. It would probably have worked better.

We didn't try herbicides as we're TRYING to be organic and not cover our nice veggies with nasty chemicals.

Digging

And so we find ourselves in the spring with a garden full of weeds. The only route...manual eradication! Yes, down on our hands and knees pulling up us much as we can, roots and all.

It's slow, back breaking work. But it's working. We're adding in some compost to our very-clay'y (?) soil and it's actually looking like something might grow in it! In fact, I'm quite encouraged by how much the weeds like the soil!

And our veggies will taste all the better for it!

Rats, Backs and not cycling.

It's been a bit of a hectic time of late so I have another backlog of posts to write. Watch this space for some back-dated things that I didn't have time to write about properly when they popped into my head.

Rats

So, our house now smells, quite pungently, of dead rat. At least we think it's dead rat. It stinks a bit, but we're kinda used to it now. They ate all the pest-controller's poison and he came back and re-baited the place, and they haven't eaten any more since that second visit. Which suggests that they haven't eaten anything. Which suggests that they're dead! We've not heard them for a while either so it's all looking good rat-wise.

We've also been outside and plugged up the holes where we think they were getting in. So hopefully that'll be the last vermin we have to deal with for a while.

Backs

I mentioned in passing the other week that I had a bad back again. This all started a couple of days after my post-Christmas "good ride". It started in my middle back, faded after a couple of days, and then came back with a vengeance in my lower back. Crazy country dancing at the wedding the other week didn't help of course.

I've seen the physio twice and all he seems to be able to do is move the pain around, rather than fix it. Looks like everything from my hamstrings to my hip flexors is screwed up and tight.

I've tried doing a bit of cycling with it (as you will read about elsewhere) and that, oddly, seems to help. But it's not going away and it's causing me more pain and frustration. I had a really low evening mid-week where it all got to me, but I've picked myself up again and have been feeling a bit more myself in the last couple of days.

The real improvement seems to have come by doing nothing - no stretching, no cycling, just sitting or lying still for as long as possible each day. I think all the muscles need to just relax themselves. I'm learning AGAIN not to throw myself into things too much and that sometimes I just need to stop.

Not Cycling

NOT cycling is an odd thing for me to be writing about. But I am not-cycling at the moment because of my back. Which means I'm driving to work. Which is, itself, depressing and frustrating.

Most people in Swindon can't live more than a few miles from where they work, yet they insist on sitting in queues of traffic for hours on end looking miserable and angry. It really bothers me. Perhaps they've never considered that cycling or walking is an option? I'd much rather be moving on two wheels than sat doing nothing in a big box on 4. Plus, the globe is warming and petrol prices are going sky-high (104.9 at Sainsbury's!). Why drive? Once I'm 100% well again I'm definitely doing as much not-driving as possible!

I wonder what we can do to get people out of there cars more. It strikes me that if we can't do it in a small town with excellent cycle routes like Swindon then where CAN we do it?

Transformations!

So, when we moved into our house the front room looked kinda like this:

It should be pointed out that the red stripe was NOT our idea. The general mess and clutter was.

Now, Sally has put a LOT of work into the painting. Her approach is very much little bits here and there whenever time permits. Whereas mine is to book some serious time out and do a load in one big go. And so, with great glee, we have taken a weekend off and finished off (mostly) the front room's facelift:

I think you'll agree is looks substantially more charming, sophisticated, pretty, homely, warm, open and a whole load of other things. We appreciate that it won't be to everyone's taste, but we like it a LOT!


In fact, I'm VERY surprised at how different it looks and I feel quite inspired to get on and make the rest of our house "ours".

Living and learning

On the New Bike - Off the New Bike - Lessons in Wallpapering

Today was supposed to be really exciting - it turned out to be quite depressing. Mostly. It did in fact end on a high - but we'll have to talk about a few lows before then.

I've been very excited about the imminent arrival of "The Felt" - my new road bike.

This week, the CycleScheme voucher arrived in the post, and I called the shop and told them to have it ready for me to pick up today.

So I woke up like a kid on Christmas day - not really able to wait for the short trip to the bike shop to get started.

We ran a few errands in town first. It was a horrible day, and as I left Sally and headed to the bike shop I began to wonder if I should have taken the car to go and pick it up. Oh well, I'd gone so far and I wasn't about to bail out. I'd have to just get it home in the rain and give it a good wipe-down when I got back.

The bike was waiting and after a brief re-fit I tentatively hopped on, expecting it to handle a bit differently to the cheap, old Raleigh hybrid. And I was right!!! Half way home, I fell off. Turns out that 25mm, semi-slick tyres don't like doing 90 degree turns in the pouring rain.

Gutted.

I tore a small hole in my waterproof jacket, put the saddle out of alignment, and I think I put the rear wheel out of true slightly - it was certainly rubbing on the brake pads.

Words can't really express my annoyance. I arrived home, drenched and with a fully-battered sense of pride.

A few photo's of the scrapes the poor thing received. Here's the Tiagra rear mech (derailleur) - which, on inspection, feels pretty sturdy and tough - maybe a cheaper bike wouldn't have survived as well:


And here's the right brake hood:


So, a little gutted, I spent some of the day fixing on the lights and computer and making a few adjustments. While doing this I took advantage of the quick-releases, and whipped the rear wheel out to check it's state of trueness. To do this you have to deflate the tyre to get the"bulge" of the tyre between the released brake pads.

Wheel and tyre didn't seem too bad, so I refitted them and re-inflated. Half way through inflation....HHHHHIIIISSSSSSSSSSSSssssssssssssbother.

That, my friends, is the sound of what I can only guess was a pinch puncture, and my (fairly censored for the purposes of this post) response.

Generally, it was a bit of a crappy start and I was feeling very dejected. I was already beginning to wonder if I'd done the right thing buying it. Part of me knows that I just need a couple of good rides on it and I'll think it's the bee's knees, but right now, I'm pretty worried about how much damage I've done. The puncture is patched and the rear wheel's not rubbing the brake pads any more, but it isn't straight and I don't know how it will ride.

I also know that I've had a REALLY good lesson in road bike handling. A lesson that I was bound to learn eventually and which was much better learned doing 5mph in town than doing 25mph on a wet country road. Maybe it was a blessing in disguise!

In between all that, Sally and I tried wallpapering the chimney breast in our lounge. This was also a fairly spectacular flop and added to the days downcast-ness. The paper dried up and curled at the corners and shrank so that the gaps between drops got bigger and it was generally disastrous.

We pushed on though. We resolved to go and buy another roll and try again. If we failed second time we'd give up and just paint the darned thing.

So we tried again - and it was a success! Or so it seems. Second time round we followed the instructions to the letter. Lessons learned about wallpapering:

• "Sizing" seems to be a good idea - use a diluted paste on the wall before you apply the paper.
• Use pre-mixed paste. It's more expensive but much more likely to work. We bought some of this second time around and it was VERY different to the stuff we mixed ourselves. If you do mix your own, it should be white and of a jelly-like consistency. Oh and make sure you're stirring the water when you add the paste powder and add it gently - it quickly forms lumps if it's not dissolved and mixed properly.
• Put LOTS of paste on the paper. We used to little first time. We applied quite liberally second time around with much better results.
• We're not sure about the best way to trim the edges from the paper once it's on the wall yet, but it seems to us that wet paper is much harder to trim. Soggy paper tears and splits easily!

I finished the day by putting up a new light fitting, which included my first experience of cutting a hole in plaster (not much to say about that - other than it makes a LOT of dust!).

It had been a long, roller-coaster of a day. Excitement, an accident, dejection and worry, failure, success and, as we stepped back and admired the new living room, great joy. We've lived a lot today, we've learned a lot today. Sometimes those set backs test us, and if we push through them we can by much more proud of the results than if it was easy!

Mice? Oh rats! And a whole host of other problems.

So, we thought we had mice in our loft but, after further inspection, a little web research, and discussions with other people about the size of droppings, we've decided we have rats. Booooo!

They seem confined to the loft above our extension and the wall cavities. After calling the council and hearing that it would take up to 5 working days to get back to us, we put poisoned bait down and this didn't initially seem to help.

The man from the council came today though. He was a very helpful little Yorkshire man, who's been doing the job of pest control for about 5 years - though I sense he could actually "smell a rat" if required - probably at a hundred paces.

He identified where they are probably coming in and out (rats have to get food and water, and there ain't none of that in our loft), and put down lots...LOTS more bait. We'll have to wait and see what happens. "They're wild animals", he said, and their behaviour is not predictable.

In the meantime, they've chewed our electric cables, tripping out our electricity, and subsequently causing us to have a non-functioning boiler. No electric, ho heating.

The fuse panel has several fuses and an RCD device. The RCD was what was tripping and this takes out the whole panel. Again, after a few phone calls and chats with other people, we worked out that our fuse box is completely incorrectly labelled, ran around the house flicking fuses and switches until we knew which fuse did what, and have isloated the upstairs lighting circuit (which is why we think it's caused by the rats nibbling cables).

So, we now have rats, and no upstairs lights, but our heating and other electrics are back on.

If that wasn't enough. I've done my back in (so I'm off the bike...AGAIN!), we have a leaky connection at the end of our washing machine inlet hose, which had caused a big puddle to form in our utility room, and our oven broke just before we had 6 people coming for new year (the timer switch, which has to be on for the oven to be on, had burnt out its contacts).

The joys of owning a house!!! Can 2008 have had a worse start?? (Well, yes, we could be in Kenya, which is in a right state at the moment - our problems are kinda put into perspective when you watch the news at the moment).

Mice again

Bother it...we seem to have mice scuttling around in our loft. How annoying. I hate them. I lay awake worrying about them terrorising me and taking over my house. Which is stupid because they're pretty harmless.

I've set traps.

Mice...

and Elephants...

Grrrrrr.

A Month Off

Phew, I'm finally back in the land of the living. Where have I been? Here's my excuses for not writing for a month...

Moving House

Well, the house exchange and completion went through. We got the keys to our new house on October 5th. Sally was away for the weekend and I'd been banned from moving in until she got home, so I got on with the job of cleaning and tidying the old place. We moved in proper on the Monday.

The house is great but a little rough around the edges. Lots of bits of DIY/building that seem to have been finished in a hurry. But it's ours, it has three bedrooms, a huge garden and it's in a great location.

Of course, we've had to clean up and get out of the old rented house too. Phew.

No Broadband

Moving house means setting up a new phone line and having our Internet connection set up. This meant several weeks without Broadband. Quite a nice experience really. We get so much more "real" stuff done without Google and Facebook and Blogger. We didn't really miss it at all. Of course, now it's back we're back in the habit of making good use of our "always on" pipe to the universe.

A note about providers...we were with Zen Internet, who provide excellent service, but at a cost. Our up-to-8Mb connection was costing £17 per month with a 2GB usage limit. So after some debate and research we decided to KEEP Sky TV and take Sky Broadband and Sky Talk (phone calls) too. Much as I dislike having hundreds of TV channels that I never watch. This appealed because:

• Sky Talk costs nothing and gives free evening and weekend calls.
• Sky Broadband is £5 for up-to-8Mb with a 40GB usage limit.
• Sky + (Sky's hard-disk based TV recording system), now has no monthly subscription cost.

Sky+ turns out to be awesome! VERY high quality recorded TV that you set up from the on-screen TV guide. You just find the programme and tell it to record. It'll record a whole series of the same programme. And you can pause and rewind live TV too. I understand how the technology works, and I'm STILL very impressed. Good technology, well implemented, is hard to find these days.

Holiday

We decided, shortly after the house move, to take a week's holiday. My In-Law's were off to Spain for a few nights and asked if we wanted to house-sit. With a free weeks' holiday on the edge of Dartmoor being offered we couldn't really refuse and it turned out to be just what we needed. We've just got back from this week off and we're well relaxed and trying to summon up the mental effort required to get back to work tomorrow.

We also popped to London on Friday for a couple of friends of ours who were having an engagement party. We're VERY excited that they're getting married and the party was really great.

Returning to London is an odd experience. We drive in thinking that it's horrid, busy, noisy, etc, but after a couple of hours re-uniting with good friends we miss it. Of course, we've made good friends here in Swindon too, but we're really still getting to know people and it's not the same as connecting with people that you've known inside-out for many years. There are things about London as a city that we miss, but mostly it's the people.

Finally...

So, yes, after all that we're in the new house, broadband is back, and we're not on holiday any more. I probably have some catching up to do. I keep having "I must write about that" moments, but can't remember what any of them are now. If they're that important then they'll come back to me I'm sure.

Exchange!!!

So after a long and complicated couple of days, which I won't go into the details of here, we finally exchanged contracts on the house and will complete on Friday! Wow. We will own 5% of a house (and be borrowing the rest from the bank).

After weeks of not very much happening this is quite a sudden thing, but we're very excited.

Time to pack some boxes, book a van, phone BT, arrange broadband, move utilities, set up redirection, pack some more boxes, hand in notice on the rented house, and a thousand and one other things...none of which involve writing this blog!

Yay!

Still not right!!!

It's been nearly a month now since I was up all night being sick...the "flu-like virus" has mostly gone away but, as anyone who's been watching my Facebook status will tell you, I still have the odd bad day. Tonight has been a particularly bad evening with me collapsing in bed and feeling like I'm right back at square one.

The doctor doesn't seem surprised and a little bit of web research (dangerous as you could probably self-diagnose pretty much anything) shows that "post viral fatigue" is not uncommon and can last a long time.

But it's very frustrating. I've been surprised at how much my life is defined by physical activity. I miss my cycling and I'm unable to do much that's strenuous at all. I tried cycling yesterday, about 4 miles worth at a very slow pace. Perhaps that what's killed me off this evening?

It's stressing me out a bit as we're buying the house...probably real soon now...and I won't be up to much packing and cleaning and shifting big boxes around. Plus, I don't know what the future holds - I guess I'll slowly recover but if there is something more long-term wrong with me, is taking on a mortgage such a good thing?

Only time will tell I guess. In the meantime we press on with our plans in faith that God will stop us if we're doing the wrong thing.

Update on house buying

A while ago I mentioned that we'd had an offer accepted on a house! A quick update is due.

The process has been moving along quite well. We stalled a bit while we chose a mortgage but that's applied for, the legal stuff has all moved along as it should, the survey is now done, and it seems that nothing can now stand in the way of our purchase (famous last words...you read them here!).

My main feeling, other then excitement, is the completely overwhelming amount of information that's involved. We requested some extra reports and searches because the house:
- is near a flood plain (far enough from it to be safe though),
- is near the site of an old refuse site,
- has recently had an extension built.

So we have the following documentation:
- an environmental report,
- a water and drainage report,
- a survey and homebuyers report,
- the information pack from the seller,
- all the mortgage information,
- information on buildings and contents insurance.

In addition, today we've received a couple of quotes and information packs for life assurance and payment protection. And my brain has just overloaded. I can't take any more!!!

There's been some discussion recently about things called home information packs that the seller is supposed to put together. I believe these are becoming mandatory for 3-bedroom houses just this week (if only we'd waited!!). What a good idea this is! If our purchase had fallen through the searches we've done and paid for would have to be re-done and re-paid-for. With a Home Information Pack it's all done once and by the seller, which seems to make a whole world of sense to me.

We are excited, we are thankful for the hugely privileged position that we find ourselves in in being able to buy a house in the first place, we're particularly thankful for the house that we've found that meets our needs so well...but my brain really is quite full up now and I need a rest.

Buying a house

We've done it! We've had an offer accepted on a house!

Actually, it happened a lot more quickly than I thought it would. So quickly that I didn't get to write anything about the house-hunting process.

You build it up in your head as being this huge thing that's really hard and takes ages to do but no...despite the differences that Sally and I had about what we wanted from a house and a neighbourhood, the fourth place that we looked out got us both very excited. We put an offer in
on Saturday and it was duly accepted.

I had some hesitations. Does God want us to buy a house? How do the notions of borrowing and spending that much money fit in with my faith? Am I just following the crowd and the culture? Is this really something that we should be doing, or should we be stepping out in a different,
more counter-cultural direction?

I never asked those questions about renting. Perhaps I should have?

I did spend some time praying about the decision. I thought hard about a little story in the bible where a man goes to Jesus and, excitedly, says "I will follow you wherever you go". Brilliant, we might think. How good, we might think, to see someone making such a passionate statement of commitment to following Jesus' teaching!

But Jesus knows the man's true motives and replies by saying that "foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head".

What does this mean? Does it mean that if we want to follow Jesus we should never settle anywhere? How does that fit the theme of community that runs through the bible, of living, sharing, and serving God together? Is buying a house too much of a commitment to stay in one
place? Or should I be settling into a community and trying to make a difference there by sticking it out, making friends and serving others?

This story is followed by another about a man who wants to follow Jesus but has a few things he wants to do first. It's a story about priorities. We should be following Jesus first, whatever that may mean for us, and doing the other things alongside that.

As I prayed and asked God about the passage and about our move I felt God saying that the most important thing was to follow Jesus. Buying a house is fine, as long as it doesn't make you lose sight of what's really important. If the house, job, money, friends, car, holiday, wide-screen TV, or any worldly thing starts to get in the way of loving God and loving our neighbours, then we need to re-prioritise.

It's early days yet and there's plenty that can go wrong, but we hope that one day soon we will own our house. But doing so MUST be an activity that enables us to love and serve and follow our God, not one that distracts us from it.